Communist Party, Japan

Communist Party, Japan (Japan Communist Party, JCP) Japan's oldest political party, established 15 July 1922, emerged from a split in the anarcho-syndicalist movement, and was formed from among those active in labour unionism, as well as socialists and radicals. At first, it resembled more an intellectual study group than an effective political force, although its early leaders, including Yamakawa Hitoshi (b. 1880, d. 1958), demonstrated a concern that theory should not become an obstacle to action. During the prewar period, the party's activities were undermined by state repression, and also because the organization was seldom free from internal bouts of factionalism, most often manifested as regular shifts in the party line. By 1933 a series of police actions had ensured that the party's leaders were either detained or in exile.

After the war, Japan's Communists emerged from their prison cells and returned from abroad with a high reputation for having been one of the few political groups that had opposed Japanese militarism. Although the Communists were initially closely associated with the democratization of Japan, the Occupation's (SCAP) decision to curtail its reforms in 1947 did much to define the JCP as an opposition force. Further harm was caused to the party's standing by its decision to move from the peaceful and gradual revolutionary line proposed by Nosaka Sanzô to a disastrous policy of armed revolution from 1950 on prompting from Moscow. Once more, internal conflict and a state crackdown forced the organization underground, from which it did not emerge until 1955.

Under the leadership of Party Secretary Miyamoto Kenji in the late 1950s, the party began to re-emphasize parliamentary methods. During the period of high economic growth, an invigorated JCP experienced a rapid increase in its organizational strength. At the time it also developed a party line that came to resemble Eurocommunism, ostensibly independent of both the USSR and China. By 1970 its membership was the largest of any Japanese political party, with a total of 300,000 cardholders, while the party newspaper, Akahata, claimed a readership of two million. The successes of the 1970s, where the JCP performed well in local and national elections, contrasted with its performance during the 1980s and 1990s when its organization and election results declined. The JCP's position has been weakened by internal squabbling as well as ideological shifts following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. In the 2000 elections, the JCP obtained 20 out of 480 seats in the House of Representatives. In its heyday of the late 1960s and 1970s, it was a dynamic political organization which, for a time, posed a real challenge to the Liberal Democratic Party.